Study on the catalyst design and reaction mechanism of xylose oxidation to xylonic acid and xylaric acid

It is an inevitable trend for the future development of chemical industry to transform renewable biomass resources into high value-added industrial chemicals. Biomass is known to be abundantly available, inexpensive and environmentally friendly for human society. Lignocellulose is an important structural component from plant based biomass. Among various downstream intermediates, xylose from hemicellulose hydrolysis can be oxidized to produce xylonic acid and xylaric acid with highly added values. Herein, xylose oxidation under moderate reaction conditions and the synergistic effects of bimetals on the reaction were investigated in details. We screened the supports and synthesis methods for PtAu bimetallic catalysts. On this basis, we prepared the high-efficiency bimetallic catalyst PtAu/TiO2 (TOF=500h-1, twice as much as the catalyst with the highest performance at present) by the liquid phase in-situ reduction method, and investigated the reaction mechanism of xylose oxidation on the bimetallic catalyst.